On a stage festooned with American flags and Fraternal Order of Police banners in North Carolina on Friday, former President Trump accepted the backing of the nation’s largest police union.
Nationwide Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes stated the “enthusiastic endorsement” mirrored the “overwhelming collective will” of the group’s greater than 375,000 members nationally.
“We stand with you, and we now have your again,” Yoes stated, promising the group’s members would “make the case” for Trump to Individuals throughout the nation over the following two months.
“It is a large endorsement for me,” Trump stated. “Boy, that’s plenty of safety.”
Previous to Trump’s occasion, the marketing campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris held a name along with her personal regulation enforcement supporters. First to talk was former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was on the Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the constructing on Jan. 6, 2021.
Dunn stated Trump’s promised help for regulation enforcement was nothing however a play for votes — and a lie.
“He’s going to inform my fellow officers that he’s their ally, he’s their buddy, and he’s [the] candidate of regulation and order,” Dunn stated. “After what I skilled on Jan. 6, I can guarantee you that he’s not.”
Dunn stated he is aware of many officers who’re “appalled by the FOP even entertaining endorsing” Trump, given his felony convictions, his actions on Jan. 6 and his latest promise to pardon the insurrectionists who attacked law enforcement officials that day.
“He deserted us,” Dunn stated. “Regulation and order and the democracy I vowed to guard — he deserted that.”
With two months till the election, each the Trump and Harris campaigns are trotting out their regulation enforcement backers as a way of attracting voters in a race through which crime — together with the economic system and immigration — has turn out to be a significant situation.
Regardless of downward tendencies in lots of crime classes nationally, voters are nonetheless weary of retail crime, drug offenses and violence, and searching for options. A latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Research ballot, co-sponsored by The Occasions, discovered {that a} majority of voters in liberal California help stiffer penalties for crimes involving theft and fentanyl.
Each Trump and Harris have stated they take such points critically and would convey options as president, whereas their opponent would solely exacerbate the issues.
Trump has solid Harris, a former prosecutor and California lawyer normal, as gentle on crime and anti-police, together with by pointing to persistent crime points in cities like San Francisco, the place she as soon as served as district lawyer. Trump has advocated for extra aggressive policing, and for much less federal oversight and extra army tools for native police departments.
U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Harry Dunn listens throughout a session of the Home Jan. 6 committee in 2022.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Related Press)
Harris has solid Trump, a felon, as a fraud who solicits regulation enforcement help when it’s handy for votes, however is in any other case hostile towards regulation enforcement — particularly once they’ve been investigating him. She has advocated for responsive however constitutional policing and for stronger federal oversight and fewer army tools for native police departments, and has touted the Biden administration’s file funding for regulation enforcement by means of COVID-19 reduction funds.
Trump’s occasion Friday was not his first with regulation enforcement, nevertheless it was a significant one, because the police union has members all throughout the nation — together with some 17,000 members in California. The group doesn’t characterize the most important regulation enforcement businesses in Los Angeles. A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protecting League, the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, stated it’s not weighing in on the nationwide race and is as a substitute centered on ousting progressive L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
After being launched by Yoes, Trump spoke for practically an hour. He stated regulation enforcement officers face “extra hazard and risk than ever earlier than,” and that “we now have to provide again the ability and respect that they deserve.”
He stated crime was the No. 1 situation that folks ask him about, and that he would convey again “stop-and-frisk” and “damaged home windows policing” to convey it to an finish.
He additionally repeated a lot of his stump speech lies and grievances — some geared toward Harris, many to applause from the gathered regulation enforcement officers. He claimed violent and different crime is “by means of the roof,” when knowledge present the alternative is true in lots of elements of the nation.
He falsely alleged Harris made it in order that “you possibly can steal as a lot as you need as much as $950” in San Francisco and “nothing occurs to you, it doesn’t matter what the hell you do.” He mocked the 2022 assault on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, at their house in San Francisco, to laughter within the crowd.
The occasion adopted a Trump marketing campaign name the place marketing campaign officers and regulation enforcement officers in swing states praised Trump’s file, blamed Harris for crime issues in California and accused her of being “pro-crime” and “coddling criminals.”
The Harris marketing campaign this week has additionally touted regulation enforcement help, together with by releasing an endorsement letter from greater than 100 former and present regulation enforcement officers and leaders.
The letter cited a spike in homicides throughout Trump’s presidency and a pointy decline in the course of the Biden administration. It described Harris as somebody who has “spent her profession imposing our legal guidelines,” and Trump as somebody “who has been convicted of breaking them.”
On the decision with Dunn, Sheriff Clarence Birkhead of Durham County, N.C., stated there that Trump tries “to painting himself as a buddy of regulation enforcement, however we all know it’s not true.”
He stated Trump would use federal regulation enforcement to go after his political enemies as a substitute of investing assets in native regulation enforcement, and use plans set out within the conservative Venture 2025 to withhold much more — “making it practically unattainable for us to maintain our communities protected from violence.”
He stated Harris, against this, “has spent her whole profession combating for individuals and standing with native regulation enforcement like me,” which is why officers like those that signed the letter are “lining up” to help her.
Sheriff Javier Salazar, of Bexar County, Texas, stated he was confused by the Fraternal Order of Police endorsement of Trump, whom he referred to as “an individual that wouldn’t qualify to be a regulation enforcement officer,” given his felonies.
Salazar stated Trump “makes use of cops as nothing greater than a photograph opp, or a tv prop,” and that he “purports to help regulation enforcement till we get in his manner — till we stand in the best way of him doing precisely what he needs to do. He proved it on Jan. 6.”
Dunn stated Trump’s solely allegiance is to himself.
“The reality is that he doesn’t care that he put my life and the lives of my fellow Capitol Law enforcement officials at risk on Jan. 6,” Dunn stated.
